


The Angels Dragged My Throne

by sequence_fairy



Category: Bleach
Genre: AU, F/M, Fix-It, accepts canon until right after 685, because i reject the entirety of 686, then it throws it out the window
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-27
Updated: 2016-08-27
Packaged: 2018-08-11 09:34:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7885897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sequence_fairy/pseuds/sequence_fairy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ten years he's been gone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> Officially the first fix-it fic I've written for Bleach, smh that I have to call this an AU. Ichiruki 2k5ever.

Today should be the best day of her life – being initiated as _taichou_ of the thirteenth, following in her brother’s footsteps and succeeding Ukitake- _taichou_ (may he rest peacefully) – but instead, from her vantage point behind the curtain at the end of the long hall, all she can see is who is _not_ here.

Ten years he’s been gone.

He walked away from the _Seireitei_ , from the _Gotei_ , from _her_. She closes her eyes against the knife of loss that slices through the bubbling joy that’s been growing since she passed the examinations.

“Why the long face?” Renji asks, and Rukia startles.

“Sh – shit.”

Renji bumps her shoulder with his elbow. “You know, if your knees buckle, I’d be happy to give you a piggyback.” His mouth quirks up in a grin, and Rukia rolls her eyes.

“Thanks,” she says, and then takes a deep breath.

“Look –” Renji begins.

“Don’t,” Rukia says. Renji ignores her.

“Rukia,” he says, and she turns to him. Renji’s dark eyes are serious and steady on her face. “It’s his loss. Don’t let it overshadow today.” He squeezes her shoulder, his hand warm through the layers of _haori_ and _shihakusho_.  “You did it little sister, and you beat me to it. Revel in _that_ instead of wallowing in memory.”

Easier said than done, Rukia thinks, but she squares her shoulders and steps out into the hall with Kyoraku- _soutaichou_ ’s announcement ringing in her ears.

–

The celebratory drinks soon turn into something a bit more boisterous and Rukia takes her leave when the drinking songs turn from bawdy to downright disturbing. She steps out into the night alone, only to find Renji following her out.

“You don’t have to follow me Renji,” Rukia says, and Renji has the grace to look abashed. His braid slips over his shoulder as he hangs his head. “I know what you’re trying to do, and I’m asking you not to.”

“Rukia,” Renji says, reaching out. Rukia ducks his hand.

“You have _no_ right,” she hisses, whirling to face him. Her new _haori_ flares out around her and settles in rippling folds around her legs.

“Excuse you,” Renji says, and jabs his finger into her face, “I have _every_ right. Who picked up the fucking pieces when that piece of shit took off ten years ago? Who was the one who was there to prod you back to life?”

“I never asked you to do any of that,” Rukia spits, and makes as if she’s going to leave. Renji’s hand flashes out and grabs her wrist. His grip is tight, and Rukia winces.

“No,” he agrees, “you never did. But I did it anyway. Because you needed someone to do it, and fucking hell Rukia, I couldn’t leave you like that. Do you know what it does to me to see you like that? Like you’re a goddamn shell of yourself?”

“You should have left well enough alone then, Renji,” Rukia says, and twists her wrist out of his hand. “Leave well enough alone now.”

She leaves Renji behind in the street, the whirl of her _shunpo_ making the hem of his _hakama_ flutter. Renji curses and heads back into the bar, planning to get blinding drunk and put this whole mess right the fuck out of his head.

—

Rukia makes it to the outskirts of the _Seireitei_ before she runs out of the boiling pressure of her anger at Renji’s words. The truth is, and it burns her to admit it, even to herself, she knows he’s right. He’s been right all along, she can’t keep waiting for Ichigo to come back, she can’t keep _pretending_ that what happened is nothing more than a disagreement and that he’ll come back and everything will be as it was.

It was _nothing_ like a disagreement. Rukia leans against the cool stone wall, tilts her head back and looks up to the sky. The stars are the same as they always were, cool and distant, pinpricks of light against the inky ever-black of the sky. She could never see them properly in Karakura - too much light pollution - and she remembers the first time Ichigo had realised how properly _dark_ it gets in the _Seireitei_.

“How do you see anything at night?” He’d asked, and Rukia had laughed at him, and teased him back, making him grin.

She latches onto the memory now, painting his face in her mind, trying to add in the ten years of time that have passed since then. She decides his hair’s probably a little longer, his jawline more pronounced, the planes of chest broader and more filled out - he’d be, Rukia tallies up the years, twenty-seven now. She imagines that he’s probably happy, curled up at home with a pretty woman (she resolutely does _not_ imagine the woman’s features) possibly finishing a degree of some kind, and Rukia shakes her head to clear it.

Now is not the time for this. There is no longer time for this. Renji was right, she needs to revel in _this_ \- the jubilation of being made _taichou_ , the peace of the last ten years - and not wallow in memory and let the past consume her. She’s done that before, and it got her nowhere. Rukia puts Ichigo firmly from her mind and heads back to the Thirteenth’s barracks.

—

The deafening screech of the hollow alarm rouses Rukia from a dead sleep and she’s on her feet and tugging her _shihakusho_ on before she even realises she’s awake. The division is bustling, everyone yelling and running about, and Rukia has to raise her voice to be heard over the din.

“Report!” She snaps, and her lieutenant snaps to attention. Sentaro still fawns over her, but they’ve come to an agreement about when and where.

“Hollow alarm _taichou_ , several sighted, western Tokyo. Karakura district.”

A cold fist of dread settles in Rukia’s stomach and her lieutenant’s words echo in her mind.

 _Western Tokyo_. _Karakura_. _**Ichigo**_.

Rukia shakes her head, steels herself, and wills her voice to come out strong. It does. “Thank you _fukutaichou_ ,” she says, and strides with purpose towards the gathering _shinigami_. They look at her expectantly. Her team - her beloved division. Rukia feels the responsibility of her position settle like a weighted shroud on her shoulders.

“Okay,” Rukia says, and a hush falls over the room, “we go down in teams. Five to a team, lead by a seated officer. Divide yourselves.” There is a flurry of movement. Rukia holds up her hand and it stills. “I want everyone to come home _safe_ ,” she says, and there’s a chorus of ‘ _hai taichou_!’ before they sweep into movement again. Rukia checks the slide of _sode no shirayuki_ in her scabbard and with a sharp glance at Sentaro, steps into _shunpo_.

She heads for the Sixth in a dead run, and brushes past the guards at the gate, hustling them into action with a snapping request to get Abarai- _fukutaichou_ and get him _now_. Not five minutes later, Renji stumbles down to the gate, half-dressed, holding his _kosode_ over one arm and hopping into his sandals as he goes.

“It’s the middle of the goddamn night Rukia, what the hell?”

“Hollow alarm,” she says, suddenly breathless, “Karakura.”

Renji’s head snaps up and his eyes bore into hers.

“I can’t–”

“I know,” Renji says, and with a nod to the gate guards, he follows Rukia back out onto the street. He hefts _zabimaru_ over his shoulder, and gives her a wink and a grin. “Let’s go end some hollows.”

They race each other back to the _senkaimon_ and then down through to the _gensei_. They come out, together, mere blocks from the Kurosaki clinic and Rukia takes a deep breath, squares her shoulders and steps out onto the air above the street. They gate closes behind them, and Rukia unfurls her senses, keeping the tendrils of _reiatsu_ thin and unnoticeable. If Renji notices what she’s doing, he doesn’t say anything, just waits for her direction.

“This way,” she says and flashes away. Renji scrambles after her. They drop out of the slipstream in downtown, and Rukia flashes towards a group of her _shinigami_ , _sode no shirayuk_ i ringing as she unsheathes it and Renji feels the rush of cold wind that preludes the first dance. He swings _zabirmaru_ , and calls his _shikai_ out, before wading into the fray after her.

The fight sings in his blood and Renji lets loose; _zabimaru_ a flashing whip that whistles through the amassed hollows. Rukia is a whirl of icy wind and they end up back to back, eventually, hemmed in by the scything claws. Renji’s thinking about options, and he can hear Rukia muttering _kido_ under her breath - the kind that she needs a whole incantation for which means it’s probably going to hurt - when a wave of boiling red-black lightning comes barrelling out of the sky.

Renji hits the deck and takes Rukia with him, pressing her into the pavement under his body. The wave of power ruffles Renji’s hair and when it dissipates, he can feel the weight of Ichigo’s _reiatsu_ on his skin. The kid was always powerful, but this is another level. Beneath him, Rukia squirms and Renji rolls off her. The both look up, and Renji hears Rukia’s aborted gasp of surprise and he feels the bite of her nails in the soft part of his side, where she’s holding onto him for dear life.

“Ichigo,” she breathes, and Renji doesn’t think she meant to say it aloud. Before either of them can say or do anything else, Ichigo flashes away. Rukia slumps against him, and Renji settles an arm around her shoulders.  Rukia takes the moment Renji offers, and when she shrugs his arm off her shoulders, she looks steadier than she has since the hollow alarm came in.

She gets to her feet, and sets about re-organizing her squad, chivvying people into order and giving orders and encouragement alike.

Renji watches from his place on the ground, and wonders about Ichigo. The red-black _getsuga_ is Ichigo’s _bankai_ , but it never felt that _deadly_ , nor that controlled in its intent before. And yet, Renji knows that he and Rukia should have been obliterated because they were directly in its path, but it touched neither of them, just swept over them like water over river stones, barely even ruffling his _shihakusho_.

—

Stupid, stupid, _stupid_.  

Ichigo flings himself into _shunpo_ , desperate to get away.  He can’t be here, not with her looking up from the ground at him like she’s seeing a ghost. Ichigo closes his eyes, willing the image of her out of his mind, fighting tooth and nail against the onslaught of memory her presence evokes.

Ten years. Ten years since he’s seen her, ten years since he’s reached out and touched her, ten years since he walked away from everything to do with her and ten years since he’s seen another _shinigami_ in Karakura – and now she’s here, and with Renji no less. Something seethes in Ichigo’s belly, something vicious and mean-spirited, and he flinches away from the feeling, not wanting to entertain what it means.

Ten years and it’s like no time has passed at all. Oh, he feels every one of those years, feels them in his soul like razor wire and shards of glass, but she looks the same as always – dark eyes flared wide at his appearance, her mouth forming the syllables of his name in the brief moment she saw him before he managed to get his bearings enough to get away.

His jerry-rigged hollow alarm (cobbled together with help from Urahara and Yoruichi, who had been the only people to welcome him back from the _seireitei_ without asking about _her_ ) had screamed him awake and sent him running out into the night. He’d caught the slip-slide drag of the hollow _reiatsu_ as soon as he’d woken, but had hung back until his senses had been able to unpick the tangle of spiritual pressure that surrounded the battleground.

There’d been a desperate edge to the battle, and the kind of feeling that leads to reckless decision-making – the kind of feeling that Ichigo remembered keenly from _before_. He’d made the split-second decision to get involved, and had started picking off strays before noticing the two _shinigami_ hemmed in by circling beasts.

He’d been pouring power into the _getsuga_ before realizing who the strangely familiar _reiatsu_ signatures belonged to, and had had to claw it back and re-direct the swing of _zangetsu_ to keep them from getting caught in its deadly jaws. Now, he’s running, exactly like he did ten years ago and that thought brings him up short. Ichigo stumbles out of the slipstream and drops to a convenient rooftop to catch his breath.

_What are you doing, idiot?_

_She was right **there** , like you’ve whined about wanting for **years** , and what? You just fucking run off like you did last time? This is why you lose, because you don’t have the **will** to see things through. No wonder she let you walk away – you are one pathetic, miserable excuse for a shinigami. She deserves better._

“Shut up,” Ichigo hisses. “I didn’t agree to this so you could insult me.”

 _Stop making it so easy then_.

Ichigo curses, and the hollow laughs, high and dangerous in the back of his mind. Ichigo flashes back into _shunpo_ and this time, manages to keep his thoughts away from Rukia’s eyes.


	2. Two

Rukia is drunk. Renji is decidedly less drunk, but still feeling the buzzy warmth of something in his veins. It’s been a long time since he’s seen Rukia properly plastered, and she’s well on her way. He leans back and watches Rukia gesture animatedly at Shinji across the table, and tries not to think too hard about how this feels like some kind of surreal alternate reality. For what is not the first time, and will probably not be the last time, he thinks that it should be Ichigo at the table with them, not Sentaro.

He’d thought for sure that after their last trip down to the _gensei_ , there’d have been some reaction to seeing Ichigo, to having him appear out of nowhere, high above their heads, looking for all the world like he’d barely aged past the seventeen year old kid he’d been the last time Renji’d seen him, but no, nothing.

Nothing except for that whisper of his name and Rukia’s nails in his skin. It had been gone as soon as Ichigo had phased out, and then she was back to business, one deep breath was all it had taken for her to resettle the mantle of _taichou_ over her shoulders.

Rukia had marshalled her troops; got them all back up through the _senkaimon_ and made her report to Kyoraku- _soutaichou_. Renji hadn’t been present for that - having had to make his own report to his own captain, but he’d heard later that Kyoraku had asked about Ichigo, and rumour was that Rukia hadn’t so much as blinked. Sometimes, Renji thinks that the trademark Kuchiki aloofness sits a little too easily on her shoulders.

Now though, he’s wondering what exactly is going to break this façade she’s wearing, because he is starting to see the way it’s cracking around the edges and the way she’s having to work harder to keep it from shattering. He sips his drink, and watches her.

—

Rukia hangs her _haori_ up on the back of her door, and slips her feet out of her _geta_ , sitting down on her futon to pull her socks off and then slip out of her _shihakusho_ and into the short robe she sleeps in. It’s late, she’s been running drills all day - like she has been for the past three weeks - and every single fibre of muscle and sinew and centimetre of bone in her body hurts. It’s better to be busy though, because it’s now, when she’s alone in the dark with her thoughts, that he comes back to her.

She’d felt him, there was no mistaking that _reiatsu_ signature, and even now, ten years later, Ichigo is still, apparently, shit at disguising his _reiatsu_. There’d been a moment - a horrible, despairing moment - where she’d thought she’d detected something else in the threads of his power, but it had been fleeting and gone before she could latch on, and then Renji had been pressing her into the pavement and she’d felt the roar of the _getsuga_ as it passed over them.

When Renji had lifted off her, she’d looked up, and caught his eye. She’d been unable to stop his name from falling out of her mouth, and unconscious of the way she’d seized Renji in a vice grip of nails in his skin. Then Ichigo had gone - slipped into _shunpo_ so fast she wouldn’t have had a hope in hell of tracking him. Not that she could have, with her division to sort out and reports to make.

She prides herself on the fact that by the time she got to Kyoraku- _soutaichou_ ’s office, she’d been able to deliver her report and even say Ichigo’s name without flinching. Kyoraku had lifted one eyebrow at the mention of the ex-substitute _shinigami_ , but had let the moment pass without pressing her for any more information. Rukia is forever grateful that he didn’t ask her any more questions, because she could feel the words beating in her chest, scrabbling against the confines of her rib cage and up into her throat - swelling into a lump she could barely speak around.

It’s here, in the privacy of her room, three weeks later, that she finally lets the mask drop and everything comes bubbling out of her in a gasping breath. She bites down on her fist, muffling the sound of her sobs into her skin, because she’s Kuchiki- _taichou_ now, and she doesn’t have time for this. _He_ left, _he_ walked away - and left her and everything they’d built together behind.

She’s curled over her lap, hair hanging down over her tear-stained face when she hears the whisper of _shunpo_ in the courtyard. She looks up, and the sight of him is a punch to the gut.

“Ichigo,” she breathes, and scrambles to her feet. He’s facing away from the sliding door, and she nearly trips in her haste. He doesn’t turn, just stands, still as a statue in her garden while she fumbles the sliding door open and all but falls down the steps to get to him. He turns before she reaches him, and the corners of his mouth lift up in a smile, before he vanishes, like so much stardust.

Rukia wakes up.

She rolls over in her bed, and stares out at the courtyard. It’s empty. Like it’s been for ten years; like his side of the bed, like his place beside her in the Thirteenth. She sighs, and rolls onto her back, and decides that she cannot go on like this, there has to be some way to make this stop.

She gets up, gets dressed and heads for the Kuchiki estate.

The _seireitei_ is still cloaked in the clutches of the deep dark of it’s night, and she steals into the manor house using the servant’s entrance in the kitchen and then up to the _senkaimon_ in the old shrine. She whispers through the incantation and steps through before the door is even solid.

—

There’s a smug smile in the back of Ichigo’s mind when the net he’s cast over Karakura catches the vibration of her arrival.

 _I **knew** she’d be back_.

“No, you didn’t,” Ichigo says, and shunts the Hollow firmly to the recesses of his mind before slipping out of his body and heading out towards the pulse of Rukia’s _reiatsu_ against the inky dark of the night.

He’s both surprised and not to find her standing in front of his mother’s headstone. She looks up when he drops out of _shunpo_ at her side.  

“You’re still shit at disguising your _reiatsu_ ,” Rukia says, and Ichigo can’t help the grin that tugs at the corners of his mouth.

“Still as tactful as ever,” he replies, and then; “the white suits you.”

“It should,” Rukia says, and there’s a bitter twist to her voice that knifes through Ichigo’s gut.

“I–“

“Don’t.” Rukia turns to face him. “You _left_ ,” she says, “ _you_ walked away from the _seireitei_ , you walked away from the _fukutaichou_ badge that was waiting for you, you walked away –“

Ichigo swallows hard. He knows what’s coming – the hardest thing he’s ever done was walk away from her and all that she stood for, but he couldn’t stay, not after –

“– from _me_.”

“I had to,” he says, “Rukia – you don’t understand –“

“Goddamnit Ichigo,” she snarls, “don’t tell me what I do and don’t understand.” She plants her hands on her hips and Ichigo takes half a step back. “Do you think that it was _easy_ for me? Do you think that I wasn’t just as fucking terrified as you were? Did you think at _all_ about what it was going to cost me to let you go?” Rukia leans up, and Ichigo feels the full weight of her _reiatsu_ pushing down on his shoulders. “Did you think about anyone other than your own fool self?”

Rukia’s rage is incandescent and bitter cold. Ichigo feels the rush of icy wind through his robes as she tightens the spiral of her power around him. They stand in the eye of the maelstrom – outside of the circle they occupy, the wind howls like a living thing and Ichigo watches bursts of ice crystals snaking across the pathway and up the side of the adjoining stones.  

“Rukia,” Ichigo says, and reaches out for her hand. She tugs it out of his reach and Ichigo drops his arm. “I – _please_ , can we just – can we just talk?”

“No, Ichigo,” she says, “we can’t. Because I _can’t_.” The maelstrom dies away suddenly and Ichigo is left unbalanced by the unexpected silence. There’s barely a whisper of her power left in the air, and Ichigo misses the taste of cold snow on his tongue.

“I came back to tell you that I’m done waiting for you, I’m done hoping that you’ll come back to the _seireitei_ , that you’ll come back to me. I’m Kuchiki- _taichou_ now, I don’t have time for this.” Rukia’s voice is hard as frozen iron and her eyes are dark - shadowed from his by the sweep of her fringe.

_You gonna let her get away with that?_

“No, I –”

“Excuse me?” Rukia asks, lofting an eyebrow and Ichigo shakes his head. She looks at him expectantly.

“I mean, uh –”

“I don’t have time for this Ichigo,” Rukia says, and turns to leave. “I spent ten years waiting for you –”

“I’m sure another minute wouldn’t hurt,” Ichigo interrupts, and there’s something nasty in his voice that he doesn’t like but it doesn’t stop when he opens his mouth again. “You think I wanted to leave you? You think that I just up and decided one morning that I’d be better off without you? Think about the last time you walked out of my life, how well did that go for me?” Ichigo’s laugh is bitter. “But you know that already don’t you, Rukia? After all, you waltzed back into my life at _just_ the right moment, right when the fucking seireitei needed a hero again - and oh look, weren’t you just an eager little bunny, coming to save the fucking day by bringing their hero back to them.”

Rukia looks like she wants to say something, but Ichigo plows on.

“I needed _time_ Rukia, time to grow up, time to remember what it was like to _enjoy_ life, time to spend figuring out what I was going to do with my _life_ \- because, in case you, like most of the rest of the _gotei_ have forgotten, I. Am. Still. Alive. My heart still beats in my chest and I bleed because my body isn’t just made of spiritual energy encased in a _gigai_.”

“The _gotei_ stole three years of my life, and what did I get in return?” Ichigo ticks his list off on his fingers. “Insomnia, a nasty case of PTSD, and oh yeah, my favourite head friend has returned to taunt me during all my waking hours - it seems good ol’ Yhwach didn’t manage to divest me completely of everything but the _shinigami_ powers.”

“The – your Hollow is back?”

“ _That’s_ the piece of information you latch on to? For fuck’s sake Rukia, this is exactly why I fucking left.”

Rukia draws herself up to her full height.

“Fuck. You,” Rukia says. Her voice is surprisingly steady, pitched low and dangerous. Ichigo feels the whisper of cold wind around his ankles. “You think you get a pass to say shit like this to me? Because of some misguided impression that we –”

“Misguided impression!? What the fuck was it then?” Ichigo steps forward, Rukia holds her ground. He’s staring down at her now, and he can feel the ice in her veins, it burns him through the heat of his anger. “I don’t think fucking you into the wall of my bedroom while you moaned my name into my neck was a ‘misguided impression’.” Ichigo’s voice ends in a snarl, and he reaches out, and grips Rukia’s shoulders as if he is going to shake her.

He wants to shake her, he wants to shake her _hard_ until everything pointy and frozen inside her rattles out and lands on the ground. Lightning flashes behind him, throwing her into sharp relief. The rain comes in a rush, and for a moment, just before it arrives, Rukia’s eyes go dewy soft and Ichigo almost lets her go.

Instead, he pulls them into _shunpo_ and she lets him drag her after him.

Ichigo drops them on a sheltered rooftop, and Rukia stumbles away from him. She’s breathing hard, chest heaving under her _shihakusho_. She leans against the wall for support. Ichigo advances towards her, and Rukia straightens.

“Am I wrong Rukia?” Ichigo asks. There’s something dark and wild in his gut that he can’t control, and behind the wall in his head the Hollow _seethes_. “Did I get the wrong ‘impression’?”

There is a long silence. The rain falls in torrents, the noise of it is almost deafening under the throb of his heartbeat in his ears. Water drips off Ichigo’s hair and into his eyes.

“No,” Rukia says eventually, and her voice is so quiet that Ichigo thinks he has misheard her. “No,” she says again, stronger this time, and she pushes off the wall. Her stride towards him is purposeful and measured, Ichigo counts her steps against the rasp of his breathing.

“Then what, Rukia?”

She stops, and they are a foot apart and Ichigo is looking down at her, while she’s looking up and her eyes are clouded by tears and rain is pouring down on them from above and it’s as different and the same to the last time they stood like this that Ichigo has to catch his breath, and clenches his fists so hard that he can feel the bite of his nails into his skin.

“I thought,” she says, and then swallows. Ichigo watches her jaw work, as if she is trying to bite back a tide of words. “I thought you didn’t want me anymore.”

“ _Rukia_ ,” Ichigo says, and the Hollow echoes it around his head. “How could you possibly –”

“You told me yourself,” Rukia says, and the hurt is back in her voice - laced underneath the husk of their proximity. “You said that you couldn’t stay, that you didn’t _want_ to stay - and then you _left_.”

“I –” Ichigo drags his hand down his face. “I never wanted – that wasn’t my intention –”

“Be that as it may,” Rukia says, and she’s got her control back - the jut of her jaw is steady and she looks up at him unflinching.

“I needed _time_ ,” Ichigo repeats, “I never meant to hurt you. I couldn’t –”  

(Still can’t if he’s honest, which, no.)

“– Rukia, you never gave me a chance to explain.”

“You’ve had ten years to explain yourself,” Rukia retorts, and folds her arms across her chest. She’s gone back to being angry, and he doesn’t blame her for it - angry is his favourite defense mechanism.

“Look,” he tries, and she glares at him. He’s forcibly reminded of their younger years - him trying to make her see sense and her thinking he was a complete and utter idiot about everything - and it makes him smile. Rukia’s eyes widen and she huffs. Ichigo imagines she’s probably stamping her foot. The thought makes him smile wider - he can feel it stretching disused muscles in his face. Ten years, and she’s still _exactly_ the same as she always was.

“What’s that look for, fool?”

“Just –” Ichigo sighs. “You’re the same as ever.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Rukia arches an eyebrow, as if in challenge, and Ichigo reaches out. Rukia stiffens as his fingers curl around her jaw. He tilts her chin up so she’s looking straight at him. “I don’t know what I was expecting,” he says, “maybe that you’d have forgotten about me, about us - moved on to something, some _one_ else.”

“As if I could,” Rukia huffs, but there’s something serious underneath the teasing lilt.

“There hasn’t ever been anyone else,” Ichigo admits. He realises it’s true as he says it - from the night she walked through his wall and into his life, there’s never been room in it for anyone else, and Lord knows, people tried. Ichigo winces internally at the thought of the _years_ Inoue wasted on him. He knows she’s happy now, but it doesn’t make him feel less guilty for what he put her through.

Rukia dried the rain that he had been drowning in as long as he could remember - and as sappy as that sounds now, nearly fifteen years later, he’s never met anyone quite like her. She came in like a hurricane, and tore him and his life to shreds before rebuilding him better and stronger and sturdier.

Rukia is the cleansing cold of that first snap frost, the one that brings the whole world to its knees and makes it wait for her to ease back and let them up. She is the rushing wind of the first proper storm of the winter season - the one that stings like glass against your skin and burrows in between all the layers of your clothes until it finds your skin. She is the inky dark of midnight at midwinter, lit only by the pinpricks of diamond-white stars in the distance and she is the sickle moon, hung over the barren snowscape, it’s cold light reflecting in all the darkest spaces.

Ichigo knows he burns like the sun, and that his fire is the snap-spark of kindling catching and the roar of the wildfire as it candles the trees into towers of flame, but he is not everlasting - he is a supernova - gone in a flash of heat and radiation, a burst of glittering, blinding, light for mere seconds, and he destroys everything in his path. Rukia is what remains, she is heat death - and everything in him tends towards her.

“Since the beginning?” Rukia asks. Hope lights her eyes and Ichigo nods.

“Always.”

“Me too,” Rukia answers, and somehow, she moves closer without him noticing, until they are pressed together, rain sluicing down his neck and dripping under the collar of his _shihakusho_ and plastering Rukia’s hair to her head. Her hands come up, to grip his collar and she pulls him down as she leans up and Ichigo’s eyes fall shut as her lips meet his.

She tastes like rain water and ice and Ichigo’s hands clutch at her waist, fingers buried in the sodden cloth of her _haori_. The kiss is like coming home. It’s like all the air has gone out of the space around them and been replaced with the vacuum of space and the only way to survive is to drown in her. Ichigo has never loved the rain so much as he does now.

Ichigo realises, as Rukia’s tongue sweeps across his bottom lip, as he yields to the pressure of her mouth as she takes what he’s offering, that he was wrong before. Rukia is not entropy, Rukia is the silence before the big bang. She is that infinite moment of stillness, before the explosion that creates every single thing and ignites the fire of life itself. 

The kiss breaks and Rukia drops back onto her heels, but doesn’t let her hands fall from his lapels, and Ichigo doesn’t let go of her waist. It’s still raining, but it’s lessening - the sounds of the city are starting to ease back in over top of the patter of the rain drops.

Rukia is the first to speak.

“This doesn’t – this doesn’t _fix_ everything,” she says, and Ichigo nods.

“I know,” he says, and let’s her go.

“I didn’t say it didn’t fix some things,” Rukia says, and there’s a hint of her smile in the curve of her lips. “Ichigo, I –”

“I know,” he says again, and she smacks his chest.

“Let me finish,” she admonishes and Ichigo stills. So does Rukia. “Can we get out of the rain?” The non-sequitor startles Ichigo into a bark of laughter and another layer of tension unwinds from his spine.

“Yeah, sure,” he turns, and beckons her to follow him. “I know a place.” 

—

The place Ichigo knows turns out to be his flat - and Rukia only hesitates a little bit following him in through the window to his bedroom. She’s still reeling a bit - the kiss was unexpected, but not unwanted, and yet, it feels like they glossed over important things that they shouldn’t have, that they didn’t actually talk things through, like she threw caution to the wind and decided to let her heart lift her onto her toes, so she could reach him to kiss him.

Ichigo said she was the same as ever, but Rukia feels nothing like she did ten years ago. She feels like she has come through some trial by fire, and that here, on the other side, she has found herself again.

“Will you come back?” Rukia asks, after Ichigo finds her and himself towels and she squeezes whatever excess water she can out of her clothes. Ichigo takes her haori and drapes it over his desk chair. His gaze turns sharp at the maroon lining, and Rukia nods in answer to his unasked question.

“I’m sorry,” Ichigo says, “I know how much he meant to you.”

“Thank you,” Rukia answers, and Ichigo takes the towel back. Their hands brush. Electricity skates up her arm - her nerve-endings firing like lightning under her skin. When he kisses her this time, it’s the answer to her previous question and Rukia leans into him, and feels the trip of his heartbeat in his chest.

They break apart and Ichigo looks down at her. There’s something sheepish in his eyes, and Rukia raises an eyebrow.

“I really am sorry,” he says, and Rukia smacks him on the chest.

“You should be,” she answers, and then she gets to watch as the smile on his face reaches his eyes. Rukia can count on one hand the amount of times she’s seen this smile, and she is so glad to see it again - to be the one who caused it.

“I missed you,” Ichigo breathes, and then before Rukia can move, his arms come up around her and he crushes her to his chest, and buries his face in her hair.

“I missed you, too, you big oaf,” Rukia teases, but she wraps her own arms around him, and they stand together, in his room, wrapped around each other, for a long time.


End file.
